In the memoir Never, British pop star Rick Astley writes about his tough childhood, discomfort with fame and finding contentment in his 50s. Photo: Alex Lake
"Don't sweat it. It's actually nothing to do with you," Rick Astley's then-teenage daughter told her middle-aged dad when a meme known as 'Rickrolling' made him internet famous.
Astley was baffled. More than 20 years since it was released, millions of people online were being inadvertently directed to the music video for his 1987 hit 'Never Gonna Give You Up'.
"I said 'how do you mean it's nothing to do with me? I'm the guy in the video and it's my song?' She said 'yeah but it's the internet. It's about everyone, it's not about you'," Astley tells RNZ's Nine to Noon.
Rick Astley on his music, fame - and the weird way he got a new generation's attention
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Although he is "still flabbergasted" by the Rickrolling phenomenon, Astley still gets a thrill from playing 'Never Going To Give You Up'.
He reckons he knew it could be a hit, but his record company kept the song in a "drawer", he suspects because he looked too young.
"I looked about 11 years old but [the song] didn't sound like that ... they were worried that that was going to be confusing for people."
Eventually, the unexpected combo of Astley's deep voice and fresh face worked as a "sales technique".
"I hang on to that sometimes because it must have meant that when people heard it on the radio they liked it, rather than seeing some hot hunky guy on the front of a super yacht."
Astley's latest album - 2023's Are We There Yet? - is the third he recorded in his garage studio after his wife and manager Lene Bausanger encouraged him to put out the chart-topping 50 seven years earlier.
Playing live, he is happy to "provide" old favourites for audience members who have come just to hear them, but is happy that UK crowds make his newer songs sound anthemic, too.
"They know every word and they almost treat them like they're just part of the same thing. That's pretty mind-boggling after all these years."
Astley says he was a "green as grass" 21-year-old when the sudden success of 'Never Going To Give You Up' propelled him into six months of daily promotional interviews in which he pretended to understand how the world worked.
"I didn't know anything. And I think I sort of went within myself a little bit. As a 21-year-old, you kind of drown a little bit, going 'I don't know what I'm supposed to say to some of these questions'."
Photo: Supplied
In the memoir Never, he writes about how his tough upbringing with a volatile single dad was what drove his desire to perform.
"I love music, I'm always messing around with music one way or another but I don't think that's the reason you go on a stage. I think it's connected to different wants and needs that I didn't get fulfilled as a kid."
For Astley, the music business was an escape route from the small town of Lanarkshire that promised stability and self-determination.
"I'm not very academic. I'm not sure I would have done very well in many other things. But I think from around the age of 18, maybe even earlier, I knew that something was going on with me and music.
"I felt it was going to be my salvation - not only be something I enjoyed doing but something that was going to take me out of the little town I'm from and take me somewhere that I wanted to be.
"It sounds really boring but [by that] I mean stability and making some money and making my own choices to get the life I wanted."